As soon as I was legally allowed to have side projects with revenue, one of my friends and I tried to start development using CakePHP, but it didn’t pan out.

I used Python and Django in an effort to use the highest-level development tools I could find. A lot of tasks were maddeningly easy, but starting a “production” project on a language/framework I didn’t know might not have been the brightest idea.

Most of the funding for the project (hosting fees, freelancer fees, etc.) came from a side-job I have on weekends as a computer science tutor. Financially, I don’t have high expectations for iRPGs. I did (as best as I could) some market analysis before starting the project, and I know that I should consider myself lucky if the website makes enough money to pay its own bills.

With all the responsibilities of having a full-time job, this project was too big for me to handle on my own. It took me a little under 2 years to complete, and I had to cut several features to avoid falling into development hell. I would have hired another developer, but my budget for the site didn’t allow it. I’ll hire a developer to help me with the site as soon as I can…and if I can.

Once I finish some priority tasks on the site, I’ll start to focus most of my spare time on a new set of projects. I’ll continue working on iRPGs mainly on the weekends.

I could keep talking about iRPGs forever, but I think this covers most of the most important details I wanted to share.